Real-Time Tracking

See also Victim Tracking and Tracing.

This is proposed to be done using the SOS Layer.

Introduction

At times of an emergency it may be improbable to expect volunteers/staff to check in with a superior in the Emergency Response Team but the incident commander is required to know the status of his deputies to make effective and efficient decisions. The objective here is to provide just that, the ability to locate objects and staff on a map without any manual communication with the person involved.

Added Value

-Instantaneously access location information of resources on a map

-Location information in the form of images to put across information cognitively

-Improve inter-organization and intra-organization co-ordination at the site of incident

Stakeholders

Benefits

-All the users of Sahana-Eden(ie. Government Organizations, NGOs, Volunteers)

Affects

The developers of Sahana-Eden, requires additional code implementation in Model,View,Backend and Client System(elaborated below)

User Stories

-Member of a NGO Emergency Response Team at the site of a flood taking part in rescue operations, enters a perilous zone and immersed in his task does not hear his alert go off, and finds himself in an unfortunate situation. Another member tracking his movements notices this and informs concerned authorities so that necessary directions can be passed down the command structure.

-A volunteer goes offline and is out of reach of all communication efforts from the incident command center, tracker maybe used to review the volunteers last movements while still online and search efforts may begin in the forecasted position zones.

Requirements

Functional

-Use GeoFencing to trigger notifications when users enter perilous zones.

-Authorize user check permissions to allow viewing of tracking details (If making use of existing framework no work is required but in case of writing custom functions to access the database, relevant framework functions maybe used to maintain security)

-Add a function to modules/s3/s3gis.py or static/scripts/s3.gis.js to generate forecasted position

-Take up position data of the objects in real time and update the database. This may be multiple controllers

-Capture and send real-time position/object data to the backend (e.g. from a mobile phone), this could happen via HTTP, URL (RESTlike controller), SMS, E-Mail, file transfer (CSV or XML), or other/multiple methods - but should be as easy, portable and reliable as possible.

-Display position tracks of objects or object groups on maps, additionally indicate or link other data (such as speed and course, or even non-discrete such as triage/recovery status, member count in groups, free-text, wiki-text, or other URL)

-Enable users to check-in/check-out through SMS refer to http://eden.sahanafoundation.org/wiki/UserGuidelines/Messaging

Non Functional

-Store different position-related data like average speed,current position,past position(before a certain time interval),approximate direction of movement

-The framework required to store position along with timestamp is present here.​https://github.com/flavour/eden/blob/master/modules/s3db/gis.py#L95

-All other attributes are to be made part of a different table which can then be made a 'component' of the main table here http://eden.sahanafoundation.org/wiki/S3/S3Model/ComponentResources

-Documentation

Design

Technologies

-Python

-Web2Py Framework

-Jquery

-OpenLayers (For advanced features)

Future Extensions

-Enable the use of TimeSlider proposed in another GSOC Project

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